


The Toothball

by Anonymous



Series: okurimono-dono [4]
Category: Evillious Chronicles
Genre: Gen, Second Period (Evillious Chronicles)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 08:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26968759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Levia has fun solving a jigsaw puzzle.
Series: okurimono-dono [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968400
Kudos: 7
Collections: Union Server of Evillious 24 hour ficjam





	The Toothball

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Puzzle

From her office window, Levia could see the autumn leaves falling. The sky dark gray and overcast, the wind slid through the trees whistling.

It was 6:53 PM, well past the end of the working day. And while Levia may have been a leading researcher in her chosen field of psychiatry, she wasn't all that interested in working late. Mostly she just wanted to be alone. And she certainly didn't want to head home tonight.

Reeling her gaze back from the window, Levia refocused her attention on the task at hand. A half-formed sphere of jigsaw pieces, its inside smooth and white like nacre. The outside of the puzzle ball was bright orange with a wide toothy grin on it, stenciled in black. It didn't make much sense to Levia at all—was it supposed to be a pumpkin? A skeleton? As it appeared on the box it looked like neither, and rather like an orange with blackened human teeth stuck inside. With a soft sigh she picked up another piece and gently rubbed it against the pads of her fingers. It didn't really matter: she found it at the dollar store a block down the street from the research institute and decided it'd be an okay way to pass some time.

Squinting, Levia slotted her piece into the ball. Most of the pieces were identically and uniformly neon orange, which was incredibly unhelpful for anyone attempting to put together an entire 450-piece puzzle. Levia hadn't thought of that before buying the puzzle set that morning, though, and was now determined to finish the damn thing out of spite.

Still, it wasn't the most exciting thing in the world to be putting together some cheap, ill-thought-out Halloween gimmick. So from time to time she would glance out the window, or think about the changing of the seasons, the changing of the world.

What Levia didn't want to think about was her family. She didn't want to think about how her brother was probably out dancing down the empty streets in cat ears and face paint; how her mother was probably dressed up as some sort of sexy vampire for her Halloween hookups. How even if she went home she would sit there alone, except with the reminders of her family there around her, the empty bottles of booze, the torn up scraps of lace, the old dirty mirror that sat in the living room judging you as you watched TV.

So she didn't think about any of that. Instead, she picked up another irregularly shaped neon orange puzzle piece and pressed it firmly into its place.

Levia's eyes wandered a little to her office desk. She'd cleaned it up somewhat haphazardly to make room for her puzzle, and the messy stack of documents at one end of the table spilled over onto her manila file folders. In a sudden burst of frustration, she grasped her head in her hands and slammed it down on the table, sending some of the jigsaw pieces flying. The puzzle ball rolled around a little before settling back into its position.

"They're all orange! Fuck!" She yelled, at nothing and no one in particular. Gritting her teeth at the old walnut wood of her desk, she traced the whorls with her finger.

"When they called me a 'millenium prodigy', I'm sure they weren't expecting me to be beat by some stupid fucking dollar store puzzle. Shit. What the _fuck_. I'm taking a break from this."

Levia closed her eyes and drummed her desk lightly, trying to drift off to sleep. But all she could think about was that stupid black grin on the puzzle box and how it seemed to mock her incompetence. Opening her eyes again, she stared at the hideous little hemisphere of neon orange in front of her.

"Fuck. I swear I'm gonna finish you. Just you wait and see. I won't lose to you."

The sky had dimmed considerably and Levia reached to flick on her office light. But even though she flipped the light switch, the room remained dark. Apparently the overhead light wasn't working now.

Levia swore she could feel a vein burst somewhere. She pulled out her desk drawer and reached for the flashlight, banging her elbow on the edge.

"Oww..."

She grabbed the flashlight and flicked it on, setting it on the desk so it just illuminated the puzzle ball and the back wall. Then she went to work with renewed vigor, picking up each piece and trying to put it in its place. After a while she fell into a kind of rhythm, and the feeling of the cold plastic between her hands was pleasant enough to distract her from the sound of echoing footsteps somewhere out in the building. When she got to the grin, the pieces fell into place much more quickly, and when she finished her puzzle the light suddenly came flashing on, bathing the small office in a cold white glow.

The change startled Levia enough for her to look up in surprise, and she had to blink a few times to get adjusted to the new light level. Then, a crash at the door. Levia jumped in her seat and turned around, in the confusion knocking the puzzle ball over and onto the floor, where it collapsed in a pile of neon orange and grinning black teeth.

At the door, looking rather sheepish, was Professor Yggdra and his assistant Michaela.

"Hey there. Sorry if we startled you-" Michaela began.

"You did," Levia began grumpily, but Professor Yggdra cut her off.

"Hey, you do know we have an office Halloween party today, right? Did you miss it on the bulletin board again?"

"Oh... right. I think I did see that at some point. Must've forgot."

"Well, you're very welcome to come down and join us," Professor Yggdra waved a hand at the door. "There's carrot cake. You like carrot cake, don't you?"

"I do, but no thanks. I don't like crowds." Levia shook her head.

"It's not much of a crowd down there, just Lich and a couple research assistants. But I thought you might say something like that, so..."

"We brought you some cake. And some candy corn. Happy Halloween!" Michaela interjected, beaming and handing Levia a platter of cake with a black plastic fork and a plastic goodie bag decorated with little cartoon bats.

"Oh- uh... thanks." Levia replied.

"Alright then, we'll leave you to it. Sorry about your puzzle there." Professor Yggdra nodded his head in goodbye and closed the door as Michaela smiled and waved, disappearing into the hallway.

Levia chuckled and turned back to her desk, opening up the goodie bag and popping a candy corn into her mouth.

"This is disgusting. But, I'm glad I got to eat it," she said, kicking at the broken jigsaw puzzle. The pieces looked sad and pathetic under the bright light.

"I solved you in the end, didn't I?"

Levia stood up and pulled on her coat.

"You know, I think I will go down to the party."

She walked out of her office and shut off the light, smirking.

"Maybe I'll steal Lich's goodie bag, too. Just to spite him."

Outside the institute the night was dark. But at least inside, Levia thought, it was warm.

**Author's Note:**

> By Gift (@okurimono-dono.tumblr.com)


End file.
